Sera's Dragon

by Lexxie Couper

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Sera’s Dragon

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Preview the next book

  Note from Lexxie

  eBooks by Lexxie Couper

  Lexxie recommends … Dakota Cassidy

  Excerpt

  He opened the throttle again and the bike leapt forward, devouring the road with blurring greed. Sera clung to Tyson again, her mind spinning. She wanted to deny everything. Dragon shifters? Pft. As if. But she couldn’t. There was a tiny part of her brain that argued it was all true. It all had to be true. But what did she do if it was? And what did that make her?

  Tapping into her mind once again—and seriously, what kind of human could do that, if not a magical, mythical one?—Tyson said, “Tell me something about yourself that you’ve always wondered about. Something you felt made you different.”

  Sera pressed herself to his back and slid her arms more firmly around his waist. Once again, his heat was a baking comfort that both relaxed her and made her pussy constrict with want. It was a wonderful sensation, one she wanted to submerge herself in. And yet at the same time, it made her nervous.

  Because you’ve never connected with anyone before? And now here you are, more than connected with a guy who is, essentially, still a complete stranger?

  Closing her eyes, she let out a soft sigh, aware of the microphone embedded somewhere near her lips in the helmet. “I don’t mix well with people,” she murmured, and even to her own ears she sounded…sad. No, that wasn’t right. Perplexed. “It’s not that I argue or that I’m shy. I’m not. But I usually prefer my own company or the company of the animals I work with to people.”

  “What do you do for a living?” Tyson asked. “Are you a vet?”

  Sera felt the corners of her lips curling as she thought of her answer. How was her mysterious stranger going to react? “I work at the zoo as an animal keeper. My primary focus is Puff, the zoo’s Komodo dragon.”

  Tyson did exactly what she thought he’d do. He laughed. She hugged him closer, loving the way his belly and chest shook with the uncomplicated, real sound.

  “Of course you do,” he chuckled, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “Why do I find this unsurprising?”

  She grinned, wriggling her thighs a little more firmly against his hips. “Because I’m wearing a Puff shirt?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, although it’s a very nice shirt.”

  She smiled wider. “Ta muchly.”

  Sera’s Dragon

  Fire Mates, Book 1

  Lexxie Couper

  Published 2016 by Book Boutiques.

  ISBN: 978-1-944003-42-5

  Copyright © 2016, Lexxie Couper.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA.

  Email support@bookboutiques.com with questions, or inquiries about Book Boutiques.

  Blurb

  Life isn't easy for a modern-day dragon shifter. Unlike those wuss werewolves, dragons can't just shift and go for a run through the nearest forest. They can't go flying on a whim. Forget about scared villagers slinging arrows; these days it's Neighborhood Watch zealots with AK-47s. Then there's the whole sex issue. Try telling the little cutie at the local Starbucks that a soul-shattering orgasm might end in bed flambé. No, being a dragon shifter kinda sucks. And for Tyson, it's even worse—because he's suddenly in heat.

  Bad news for the stranger he spies running along Bondi Beach.

  Ty instantly recognizes Sera as his mate. Now he has to convince her, while also dodging the psychopathic dragon hunter on his tail. Scorching sexual persuasion should do the trick. Hopefully. Because if Ty doesn't join with his Fire Mate before his heat cycle finishes, bad things will happen. Lots of bad things.

  Previously Published

  (2011) Ellora's Cave, Original Title: Ty the Sexy Dragon

  Dedication

  To Dawn Marie Vaeoso. Your enthusiasm, your help and your dragon research made writing this all the more fun. Thank you.

  Acknowledgements

  Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs, Tibbs Design

  Chapter 1

  Sydney, Australia

  Heartburn sucked. Even for a dragon shifter.

  Tyson Conley pressed the heel of his palm to his sternum and rubbed in a slow circular motion, knowing it would do sweet F.A. to relieve the pain. This is what he got for eating spicy meatball pizza. Every friggin’ time, he ended up in hell. At some stage of the game he was going to learn his lesson.

  He could already feel the insidious heat radiating up through his throat from his chest, but whereas a human would pop a Mylanta or two and be done with it, he was now in for a scorcher of a time. Thankfully he couldn’t exhale fire in his human form, but that didn’t stop the inferno in his chest from making him wish he were dead. Damn, it felt like the lining of his digestive tract was being scalded to hell.

  Ty let out a growl, a thoroughly bestial sound that made the old duck sitting at the table next to his flinch. She stared at him, washed-out blue eyes wide behind her thick glasses.

  He gave her an apologetic smile, fighting the urge to fidget in his chair. “Sorry.” He pushed the remains of his pizza away. He was done. If Ryan ever turned up, he could eat the rest of the damn thing. As far as Tyson was aware, spicy meatballs only made his younger brother more—

  A million pinpricks of fire raced abruptly over Tyson’s flesh. Then another million. His breath caught, his mouth went dry and, despite feeling like he was about to spontaneously combust, he felt frozen.

  What the hell?

  The old duck beside him glared, thin mouth puckered with disapproving disdain. He must have made a noise to warrant her obvious ire once more. What it was, though, he didn’t have a bloody clue. Another growl? A groan?

  Invisible fire swept over his skin again, hotter this time—so much hotter. And purposeful. Shooting over his skin like an inferno until his dick was so fucking hard he wanted to cry out in pain. And pleasure. Oh God, did he want to cry out in pleasure.

  Holy shit…

  The mating fire.

  Tyson twisted in his seat, frantically looking around the beachfront café even as he felt like he was burning up. No one stared back. No one gazed at him with open hunger. No one stalked toward him with single-minded purpose or made coy goo-goo eyes from afar. The only one paying him any attention was the old duck with the sour-lemon face, and there was nothing hungry or sexual about the way she stared at him. She looked as if she were about to pull an Uzi from her handbag and save the world from a psychopath.

  She leaned toward him, eyes narrowing behind her pink glasses. “Are you on drugs, son?” Her lips—painted the same pink as her coke-bottle glasses, Ty noted in a brief moment of surreal detachment—pursed tighter. “Are you tripping?”

  Fresh fire scalded his flesh, so hot, so intense, he gritted his teeth. His cock throbbed with such impatient insistency he feared he was going to erupt. He blinked at the old woman. Opened his mouth. Closed it. His throat wouldn’t work. His balls felt ready to burst.

  Mating fire? How could he be experiencing the mating fire? Since
when were there female dragon shifters in Syd—

  A woman jogged toward the café, holding the leash of a massive animal that could be a dog but looked more like a hairy…thing…loping beside her. She moved at a leisurely pace, dark-red ponytail flipping behind her head like a dancing flame, slim body radiating energy, breath slipping from her in streams of delicate mist Tyson knew only he could see.

  She ran past the café, dog-slash-thing keeping pace, and Tyson’s entire body went up in flames. Heat and lust and want. Need.

  Urgent need. Hungry want. Dire lust.

  His heart slammed into his throat. His mate. His Fire Mate. Fuck, he’d seen his Fire Mate. And she was—

  He bolted to his feet, stare locked on the woman jogging through the crowded footpath. His table went skidding, bumping into the old duck’s. The remains of his pizza clattered to the floor, along with his untouched beer, his phone and the old duck’s glass of wine. Beer and wine splashed his ankles, dribbled inside his shoes, but he didn’t care. He had to catch her. Had to—

  “Sonny,” she hissed. “Do you know you’re making noises like a—”

  Dragon.

  The word reverberated through his head, drowning out whatever word the old duck had used just as the crowd swallowed up the jogging woman.

  Dragon.

  He was making noises like a dragon. A dragon in heat.

  He was making noises like a dragon in heat because he was a dragon in heat. And Christ on a pony, his Fire Mate had just jogged by, oblivious to his existence, triggering the mating fire—and she was human.

  Human. How the fuck could she be human? Surely he was wrong. True, he didn’t detect the distinct honeyed-sulfur scent all female dragon shifters exuded…but since when did dragon shifters mate with humans?

  Since never, that’s when. They may fuck them every now and again, but mate with them?

  No. It wasn’t possible.

  Of course it isn’t. So tell that to your body.

  His body, however, wasn’t listening to logic and millennia-old fact. His body was well and truly on its way to shifting—shifting for fuck’s sake!—and unless he did something soon, something drastic and/or crazy, the busy Bondi Beach esplanade was going to find itself plus one very horny, very large, very medieval mythological dragon.

  He stumbled away from his table, trying to find the woman—his mate—in the flow of pedestrians filling the footpath that ran between the café and the beach. He had to get to her. What the hell he was going to say, he didn’t know, but he had to get to her and, if nothing else, kiss her. And hope to all things holy that simple contact would quell the shift.

  “Sonny, did you know you have a very large erection?” his ever-informative elderly neighbor asked, hissing again, her voice somehow punching through his stunned disbelief.

  Tyson blanched. He jerked his gaze back to her, down to his groin, to the bloody obvious hard-on tenting his cargoes, and then back to the woman. “Err…”

  She smirked, and for an insane moment, she didn’t look old at all. Or duckish.

  And then fresh fire razed Tyson’s flesh, licked at his balls, his groin, and he forgot about old ladies. Fresh fire accompanied by a bone-deep shudder, and he knew his Fire Mate had turned around. She was jogging back toward him.

  Fast.

  He bolted. Vaulting over chairs, tables and the café’s neat row of potted palms. There was a shocked shout from behind him, a few loud what the hells, a bray of stunned laughter—and then nothing.

  Nothing but the thumping of his heart and the roaring of blood in his ears.

  Bloody hell. He was about five minutes away from an uncontrolled and unwanted shift into dragon form, he was still fighting a mean case of heartburn and he was sporting an erection the size of a cricket bat. What a perfect first impression to make on the complete stranger he was going to kiss right here on the busy Bondi Beach foot—

  He ran straight into her.

  There was a startled oof, a growl, a warm and firm body pressed to his…followed by an explosion of heat over his flesh, through his body, into his soul.

  Two wide, stunned blue eyes stared up at him—and then Tyson crushed her lips with his. He kissed her and invaded her mouth and let the demand pounding through his body be consumed by her sweet, destined blaze.

  A stranger’s tongue was in Sera’s mouth. In her mouth.

  Holy smack, a stranger’s tongue was in her mouth. Rolling and sliding over her tongue. The stranger was kissing her. No, not just kissing her. He was fucking her mouth. Making goddamn love to her mouth with his tongue while something long and thick and wicked hard that was most likely an impressive erection poked at her belly. He was cupping her right breast in a strong, kneading caress, teasing her hard nipple, and what was she doing?

  Just what the hell was she doing?

  Was she fighting him off? Was she pushing him away and kicking him in the balls? Was she letting Hannibal rip said kicked-in balls off?

  She sure as hell wasn’t paying heed to all those stranger-danger lectures from when she was a kid, that’s for certain.

  No. She was standing there like some kind of skanky ho, letting him. Letting him. His tongue was practically playing with her tonsils and she wasn’t putting up a fight. Far from it. She was kissing him back. Her tongue was stroking his, her lips were parted and she was kissing him back big-time. Holy smack, she was even moaning.

  What the hell was wrong with her? It was like she had lost control of herself the second the guy slammed into her. Shit, even her hands had strayed to his chest—his broad, hard, smooth chest that seemed to burn under his light-cotton shirt with a heat that should have screamed fever but instead it made her pulse quicken, her pussy throb and her tongue stroke his some more.

  This had to be some random—and thoroughly surreal—act of impulsive seduction. Like the guy in New York who gave out hugs, except this guy gave out mind-blowing, tonsil-stroking kisses. Had to be.

  She had to stop him.

  Except she didn’t. Someone else did.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” a man barked to her right, a second before the tongue-fucking stranger was hauled backward. “There’ll be none of that here, mate.”

  Something growled. An animal. A big animal.

  Sera snapped her gaze to Hannibal, but her cousin’s dog was just sitting at her heel, licking his balls.

  She jerked her gaze back to her stranger—her stranger?—and almost let out a yelp.

  She hadn’t gotten a good look at him before, just remembered a quick flash of hunky, dark yumminess a second before he crushed her lips with his. Now he stood glaring at the cop holding his arm, very much still hunky and yummy what with his dark, floppy hair, equally dark straight eyebrows and dark-dark eyes. Very much hunky and yummy but oh so very much frightening. Menacing. Malevolent.

  As dark and hunky and yummy as he was, he looked like he was about to rip the head off the cop who suddenly didn’t seem to appear as brave and determined and authoritarian as he had a second ago. Now the cop looked scared.

  Scared of her stranger. The guy who had come out of nowhere, kissed her until she moaned and was currently glaring at the cop, nostrils flaring, chest heaving, growling in an utterly inhuman way that turned Sera’s pussy to liquid.

  Oh God help her, she’d just French-kissed a psychopath. And was horny about it.

  Oh wow…

  “Y-you can’t…” the cop stammered, stumbling back a step.

  Her growling, nostril-flaring stranger sucked in a breath and swung his gaze back Sera. “I can smell your want.”

  The claim was a low murmur through barely parted lips. His eyes seemed to glint, another growl rumbled in his chest and, with a shudder unlike any Sera had ever seen, he turned and sprinted away. Through the bustling pedestrians on the footpath toward the crowded sands of Australia’s most famous beach.

  He didn’t slow. He didn’t deviate from his path. He ran straight for the water, stripping his shirt as he went, and splashed into the sur
f, still wearing his cargo shorts and shoes.

  “What the hell?” Sera whispered, watching him.

  Without breaking his break-neck pace, the sun glimmering off his bare torso, he dove under the first wave and was gone.

  Sera blinked.

  Shook her head and blinked again.

  Her stranger didn’t emerge from the water. She scanned the waves, certain her eyes were playing tricks on her. Nothing. All she could see was a beach full of laughing, swimming people, none of whom had kissed her senseless in the last five minutes.

  Whoever he was, he could hold his breath for a long time.

  “Ummm.” The cop beside her shuffled into view. “Do you…do I need to take a statement…”

  Sera tore her stare from the breaking waves and frowned at him. He looked uncomfortable. Uncomfortable and ruffled. His cheeks were pink and his gaze didn’t want to settle on anything.

  Well duh. Of course he’s ruffled. Did you hear the noises your stranger made? You’re ruffled too—although for some insane reason it’s because you’re horny. And while we’re at it, why on earth are you still calling the psychopathic kisser your anything?

  She shook her head and offered the cop a sheepish smile. “No. It’s okay. He’s my…my boyfriend.”

  What the hell? Now why in the name of God did you say that?

  The cop seemed to flinch, as if the very thought of standing near the psychopathic kisser’s girlfriend was dangerous. He shot Hannibal a quick look, perhaps hopeful her cousin’s Irish Wolfhound-Mastiff mix might give him some reassurance. Hannibal, ever the epitome of un-neutered canine, continued to lick his balls, totally uninterested in the whole situation.

  Sera frowned again, this time at the dog. His disinterest in itself was just as freaky odd as her stranger.

  God, will you stop calling him your stranger? Seriously, it’s getting…weird.

  It was. The whole thing was. The man, his kiss, her reaction to it, the very pleasant heat his touch had provoked, smoldering away in her core. Hannibal’s complete lack of care about it all. She ran with her cousin’s dog for one very specific reason—he wouldn’t let anyone near her. It wasn’t like she was constantly in need of protection; she wasn’t. But just of late, every time she went out she seemed to get accosted by weirdoes. Hannibal kept them all away.